The Price of Soap
by Laura Schiller
Summary: 2012 movie. The Levin brothers have no idea of the effect they have on women.


The Price of Soap

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Anna Karenina

Copyright: Public domain/Joe Wright & Tom Stoppard

_Author's Note: This story is based on a deleted scene from the 2012 film version, but I hope it will make sense even to those who haven't watched it. Levin's affair with a peasant girl was in the book anyway; the movie only gave her a name and some personality. The moment I saw her, I thought she and Masha would understand each other very well._

Masha had only gone to fetch Kolya a bowl of soup; she hadn't meant to overhear anyone in the kitchen, but once she did, she froze outside the door. This huge rambling farmhouse made her nervous, with its many doors and winding passages. Ingrained habits of survival told her that the more she knew about this place and its people, the more she would be able to predict how they would react to her. Kolya she trusted, but Agafya Mihailovna looked at her with narrow, suspicious eyes, the men looked at her too freely, and most of the younger women barely looked at her at all. It made her edgy, and so the equally edgy voice behind the door caught her attention.

"I can't stay here." A young maidservant, brusque and deep-voiced, whom she knew by sight but could not name.

"Don't be ridiculous." Agafya. "You can't leave now, not with all these guests coming."

_All these guests?_ thought Masha. _But Kolya and I are only two … _

The maid sighed. "You have all the help you need, aunt. You could run this place by yourself if you wanted to."

"Hmph."

There was a long pause, in which Masha felt the tension even through the grain of the door. The housekeeper's niece took a deep breath as if to say something, let it out, and then finally said it, in a voice so fragile it could easily have been another girl's: "I can't … I don't want to see him. Or her. Especially her."

Masha felt cold. Not just the natural cold of Russia, which had never really left her since her ill-fated journey from India, but a chill that bit into the marrow of her bones. Nadya, the cook's helper, had returned to the village the very day she heard Kolya talking about Masha's origins. _Disgraceful,_ she'd hissed. _I won't live under a roof with the likes of you. _If only Kolya's absurd pride didn't drive him to tell everybody her sordid story; and yet, how she loved him for it, for never once being ashamed of her or the kindness he'd shown.

She thought, wearily, that she really should have learned to endure this by now. Just as she should have learned to endure poverty; the touch of men, no matter how harsh or indifferent; the diseases, even the children she could not afford to keep. Somehow, though, it never became easier. She clenched her fists inside the frayed sleeves of her dress.

"Oh, Serafina." Agafya's matter-of-fact voice softened with compassion. "You must have known something like this would happen eventually."

Masha smiled bitterly. Had the servants really expected all along that Kolya would bring some form of disgrace into the house? Did they think so little of him? No wonder he had waited so long to come back.

"I _know_." Serafina's voice cracked with strain. "I only … oh, it doesn't matter. Lecture me all you like, Aunt Agafya, but I am _not _staying in this house."

The door was flung open, too quickly for Masha to move away. A woman burst out and stormed past her, bumping into her shoulder, only to stop and whirl around.

In spite of her plain dress and apron, she was beautiful. Her brown curls escaped from her braid to frame a lean, strong, almost elegant face that could have belonged among the portraits in the Levin family parlor. It was also a forbidding face, with furious red-rimmed eyes and lips pressed tight together. She looked ready to cry, or hit someone, or possibly both.

Masha felt colder than ever, and angry along with it. That was Kolya's influence; before him, she'd often been too hopeless to even feel anger.

"You don't have to leave on my account," Masha snapped.

To her confusion, the other girl's eyes widened in surprise. "What?"

"I've done nothing to you."

And even if her desperate sins could somehow taint the good name all the women in this house, there was nothing she could do to stop it. Nothing except leave Kolya to his illness, which she would never do in a hundred years.

"What? N-no!" Serafina shook her head, dislodging even more thick strands of hair, more annoyed than angry now. "Did you - ? You had no right to listen, that was none of your concern!"

Masha bit back a sharp retort. She _didn't_ have the right, after all; regardless of her own fears for her safety, Agafya should have been able to have a private conversation with her niece. "You're right, it wasn't. I beg your pardon."

She must have said this quietly enough not to threaten or annoy, because the brunette made no move to hurt her. Instead she sighed and seemed to shrink into herself, like a water-flask that had been punctured.

"Anyway," she muttered. "I'm not leaving because of you. I'm leaving because of … her. Princess Ekaterina or whatever her name is. She'll be here in a week, did you know?"

"Who?"

"The Master's new wife," Serafina said flatly. "Who else?"

Kolya's new sister-in-law? Why would –

"Oh." Masha's eyes flew wide open.

"Yes." Serafina's smile was thin as a knife-blade. "I'm no better than you, after all, so I've no right to judge."

Masha thought of the man she had met that one time at Kolya's lodgings, who looked so much like him, only strong and healthy and with a lighter shade of red hair. The man who had stammered over what to call her, barely looking her in the eye, and looked embarrassed of having invited Kolya back to the estate as soon as Kolya said he would not go without her. So even that man toyed with his peasants, did he, like so many other gentlemen? She shouldn't have been surprised.

"I understand," Masha said softly. "And I'm sorry."

Serafina leaned against the wall, her arms crossed, her shoulders slumped. "He's not like other gentlemen. Konstantin Dmitrievitch, I mean."

"No?"

"I know how that sounds, but if you knew him, you'd see what I mean. He always spoke to me about things, God and politics, as if he truly cared what I had to say. And he swore he'd never marry. I suppose I thought … " She bit her lip and shook her wild head.

"You thought you could be to him what I am to Kolya?"

"I was a fool," Serafina muttered.

"No." Masha gently placed a hand on her arm. "No, you're not. At least if you are, so am I."

Serafina's dark eyes stared down at Masha with a strange blend of emotions in their depths.

"He lets you call him Kolya?" she asked wistfully.

"He insisted." Masha could not help smiling, just a little bit, at his passionate way of insisting on things like that, at least before his body had begun to betray him. "He says titles are for fools, and every man and woman should be equal."

"He sounds mad."

"Mad and wonderful," Masha agreed, still holding back her smile.

Serafina put her hands in her apron pockets, and whatever she found there made her pause. Her face contorted with misery, and the tears she had been holding back finally forced themselves out of her eyes.

"Oh, God, Marya," she burst out. "I wish I was you!"

Masha held the ends of her shawl so tightly, she feared unraveling the wool. She thought of Kolya in his room, shaking with chills even as he sweated through the bedclothes, coughing drops of blood on the manuscript he still forced himself to work on. Snapping at her for vodka, so dependent on that devil's poison that he suffered even more without it, and she had no choice but to bring it to him. The awful helplessness of not knowing what to do. The fear of what would become of her, turned out of the house by the self-righteous Konstantin Dmitrievitch, once the only man who had ever cared for her was gone.

"Don't you think _I_ wish I was you, Serafina?" she said, and the words were shards of Russian ice. "Don't you think I would do anything to see Kolya well and happy, never mind whether I was there or not?"

Serafina lowered her head in silent shame.

With a trembling hand, she held out something from her apron pocket. It was a cake of soap wrapped in white paper. Even among the common smells of the estate, wood and straw and animals and Agafya's cabbage soup, Masha could pick out the scent of lavender.

"Master sent me this, but … but I don't want it. Will you … ?"

"Thank you." Masha smiled and closed her hand around the precious soap, knowing exactly what it was bought with, and understanding in her heart was Serafina meant by the gift. "I'll put it to good use."

She would share it with Kolya. If she was lucky, he'd tease her about where she'd found such a luxurious article, and they could laugh about it together. And she might just use it on herself, and let it do what it was meant to do: make someone feel clean, clean and pure, for once in their lives.


End file.
